Sexual Harassment,Negative Emotions,and Turnover Intention in the Restaurant Industry: The Moderating Effect of Pay Satisfaction

Abstract

Sexual harassment in the workplace remains one of the most significant issues affecting the hospitality sector today. In particular, scholars need to better understand why some employees choose to remain employed by a company despite experiencing such harassment. Drawing from appraisal theory and social exchange theory, the goal of this study is to investigate the mediating effects of negative emotions (i.e., shame and anger) on the relationship between sexual harassment and turnover intention, and the moderating effect of pay satisfaction on the relationship between such negative emotions and turnover intention. Data were collected from 500 full-time restaurant employees in the United States. Using structural equation modeling (SEM), all direct effects were supported, except for the impact of shame on turnover intention. Moreover, anger mediated the relationship between sexual harassment and turnover intention, and pay satisfaction moderated the relationship between anger and turnover intention. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed in detail.

Keywords

sexual harassment shame anger pay satisfaction turnover intention

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Agrusa

J. F.

Coats

Tanner

Leong

J. S. L.

(2002). Hong Kong and New Orleans: A comparative study of perceptions of restaurant employees on sexual harassment. International Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Administration, 3(3), 19–31.

Ahmat

N. H. C.

Arendt

S. W.

Russell

D. W.

(2019). Effects of minimum wage policy implementation: Compensation, work behaviors, and quality of life. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 81, 229–238.

Alexandrov

Babakus

Yavas

(2007). The effects of perceived management concern for frontline employees and customers on turnover intentions. Journal of Service Research, 9(4), 356–371.

Amissah

E. F.

Gamor

Deri

M. N.

Amissah

(2016). Factors influencing employee job satisfaction in Ghana’s hotel industry. Journal of Human Resources in Hospitality & Tourism, 15(2), 166–183.

Anderson

J. C.

Gerbing

D. W.

(1992). Assumptions and comparative strengths of the two-step approach: Comment on Fornell and Yi. Sociological Methods & Research, 20(3), 321–333.

Bartunek

J. M.

Huang

Walsh

I. J.

(2008). The development of a process model of collective turnover. Human Relations, 61(1), 5–38.

Berkowitz

Harmon-Jones

(2004). Toward an understanding of the determinants of anger. Emotion, 4, 107–130.

Blau

(1964). Exchange and power in social life. Wiley.

Bliss

L. M.

Collins

(2020). Sexual harassment: What is at stake at JJ Steak. Journal of Teaching in Travel & Tourism, 20(4), 389–394.

10.

Bouckenooghe

Raja

Butt

A. N.

(2013). Combined effects of positive and negative affectivity and job satisfaction on job performance and turnover intentions. The Journal of Psychology, 147(2), 105–123.

11.

Byrne

B. M.

(2016). Structural equation modeling with AMOS: Basic concepts, applications, and programming. Routledge.

12.

Chan

S. H. J.

C. T. D.

(2019). The mediating effects of job satisfaction and organizational commitment on turnover intention, in the relationships between pay satisfaction and work-family conflict of casino employees. Journal of Quality Assurance in Hospitality & Tourism, 20(2), 206–229.

13.

Chen

F. F.

Sousa

K. H.

West

S. G.

(2005). Teacher’s corner: Testing measurement invariance of second-order factor models. Structural Equation Modeling: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 12(3), 471–492.

14.

Cheng

J.-C.

Yang

Y.-O.

(2018). Hotel employee job crafting, burnout, and satisfaction: The moderating role of perceived organizational support. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 72, 78–85.

15.

Cheung

Baum

Hsueh

(2018). Workplace sexual harassment: Exploring the experience of tour leaders in an Asian context. Current Issues in Tourism, 21(13), 1468–1485.

16.

Chi

S.-C. S.

Friedman

R. A.

H.-H.

(2015). Vicarious shame and psychological distancing following organizational misbehavior. Motivation and Emotion, 39, 795–812.

17.

Cho

(2002). An analysis of sexual harassment in Korean hotels from the perspective of female employees. Journal of Human Resources in Hospitality & Tourism, 1(3), 11–29.

18.

Conway

Lance

(2010). What reviewers should expect from authors regarding common method bias in organizational research. Journal of Business and Psychology, 25(3), 325–334.

19.

Currall

S. C.

Towler

A. J.

Judge

T. A.

Kohn

(2005). Pay satisfaction and organizational outcomes. Personnel Psychology, 58(3), 613–640.

20.

Desplaces

Ogilvie

(2020). Scenario-based training for sexual harassment prevention. Journal of Behavioral & Applied Management, 20(2), 69–84.

21.

DiPietro

R. B.

Moreo

Cain

(2020). Well-being, affective commitment and job satisfaction: Influences on turnover intentions in casual dining employees. Journal of Hospitality Marketing & Management, 29(2), 139–163.

22.

Eller

M. E.

(1990). Sexual harassment: Prevention, not protection. Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly, 30(4), 84–89.

23.

Ellsworth

P. C.

Scherer

K. R.

(2003). Appraisal processes in emotion. In Davidson

R. J.

Scherer

K. R.

Goldsmith

H. H.

(Eds.), Handbook of affective sciences (pp. 572–595). Oxford University Press.

24.

Emerson

R. M.

(1976). Social exchange theory. Annual Review of Sociology, 2(1), 335–362.

25.

Feiring

Taska

L. S.

(2005). The persistence of shame following sexual abuse: A longitudinal look at risk and recovery. Child Maltreatment, 10(4), 337–349.

26.

Fitzgerald

L. F.

Drasgow

Hulin

C. L.

Gelfand

M. J.

Magley

V. J.

(1997). Antecedents and consequences of sexual harassment in organizations: A test of an integrated model. Journal of Applied Psychology, 82(4), 578–589.

27.

Fitzgerald

L. F.

Gelfand

M. J.

Drasgow

(1995). Measuring sexual harassment: Theoretical and psychometric advances. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 17(4), 425–445.

28.

Fitzgerald

L. F.

Magley

V. J.

Drasgow

Waldo

C. R.

(1999). Measuring sexual harassment in the military: The sexual experiences questionnaire (SEQ-DoD). Military Psychology, 11(3), 243–263.

29.

Fitzgerald

L. F.

Shullman

S. L.

Bailey

Richards

Swecker

Gold

Ormerod

Weitzman

(1988). The incidence and dimensions of sexual harassment in academia and the workplace. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 32(2), 152–175.

30.

Fornell

Larcker

D. F.

(1981). Evaluating structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error. Journal of Marketing Research, 18(1), 39–50.

31.

Frone

M. R.

(2008). Are work stressors related to employee substance use? The importance of temporal context assessments of alcohol and illicit drug use. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(1), 199–206.

32.

Fuller

C. M.

Simmering

Atinc

Babin

B. J.

(2016). Common methods variance detection in business research. Journal of Business Research, 69(8), 3192–3198.

33.

Geddes

Callister

R. R.

Gibson

D. E.

(2020). A message in the madness: Functions of workplace anger in organizational life. Academy of Management Perspectives, 34(1), 28–47.

34.

Gilbert

Guerrier

Guy

(1998). Sexual harassment issues in the hospitality industry. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 10(2), 48–53.

35.

Gilbert

(1997). The evolution of social attractiveness and its role in shame, humiliation, guilt and therapy. British Journal of Medical Psychology, 70(2), 113–147.

36.

Grandey

A. A.

Sayre

G. M.

(2019). Emotional labor: Regulating emotions for a wage. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 28(2), 131–137.

37.

Gruenewald

T. L.

Kemeny

M. E.

Aziz

Fahey

J. L.

(2004). Acute threat to the social self: Shame, social self-esteem, and cortisol activity. Psychosomatic Medicine, 66, 915–924.

38.

Hair

J. F.

Black

W. C.

Babin

B. J.

Anderson

R. E.

(2010). Multivariate data analysis (7th ed.). Prentice Hall.

39.

Haldorai

Kim

W. G.

Pillai

S. G.

Park

Balasubramanian

(2019). Factors affecting hotel employees’ attrition and turnover: Application of pull-push-mooring framework. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 83, 46–55.

40.

Harlos

(2010). Anger-provoking events and intention to turnover in hospital administrators. Journal of Health Organization and Management, 24(1), 45–56.

41.

Hejdenberg

Andrews

(2011). The relationship between shame and different types of anger: A theory-based investigation. Personality and Individual Differences, 50(8), 1278–1282.

42.

Heneman

H. G.

Schwab

D. P.

(1985). Pay satisfaction: Its multidimensional nature and measurement. International Journal of Psychology, 20, 129–114.

43.

Hight

S. K.

Gajjar

Okumus

(2019). Managers from “Hell” in the hospitality industry: How do hospitality employees profile bad managers? International Journal of Hospitality Management, 77, 97–107.

44.

Huang

Zhang

(2019). Understanding precedents for frontline employee turnover in luxury hotels: Emotional intelligence as a unifying factor. Journal of Human Resources in Hospitality & Tourism, 18(1), 26–46.

45.

Ineson

E. M.

Yap

M. H. T.

Whiting

(2013). Sexual discrimination and harassment in the hospitality industry. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 35, 1–9.

46.

Jacobson

R. K.

Eaton

A. A.

(2018). How organizational policies influence bystander likelihood of reporting moderate and severe sexual harassment at work. Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal, 30(1), 37–62.

47.

Jarvis

C. B.

MacKenzie

S. B.

Podsakoff

P. M.

(2003). A critical review of construct indicators and measurement model misspecification in marketing and consumer research. Journal of Consumer Research, 30(2), 199–218.

48.

Jolly

P. M.

McDowell

Dawson

Abbott

(2021). Pay and benefit satisfaction, perceived organizational support, and turnover intentions: The moderating role of job variety. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 95, .

49.

Jung

H. S.

Yoon

H. H.

(2015). Understanding pay satisfaction: The impacts of pay satisfaction on employees’ job engagement and withdrawal in deluxe hotel. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 48, 22–26.

50.

Jung

H. S.

Yoon

H. H.

(2019). How does workplace harassment influence the employees’ response in a deluxe hotel? The Service Industries Journal, 39, 11–12.

51.

Jung

H. S.

Yoon

H. H.

(2020). Sexual harassment and customer-oriented boundary-spanning behaviors: The role of burnout and psychological safety of deluxe hotel employees. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 32(1), 3–19.

52.

Karatepe

O. M.

Avci

Karatepe

Canozer

(2003). The measurement of job satisfaction: An empirical study of frontline employees in the northern Cyprus hotel industry. International Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Administration, 4(1), 69–85.

53.

Kim

J. K.

Holtz

B. C.

(2020). Rising above: Investigating employee exemplification as a response to the experience of shame induced by abusive supervision. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 93, 861–886.

54.

Kim

Sturman

Kim

E. S.

(2015). Structural equation modeling: Principles, processes, and practices. In Strang

K. D.

(Ed.), The Palgrave handbook of research design in business and management (pp. 153–172). Springer.

55.

Lebel

R. D.

(2017). Moving beyond fight and flight: A contingent model of how the emotional regulation of anger and fear sparks proactivity. Academy of Management Review, 42(2), 190–206.

56.

Lee

Madera

J. M.

(2019). A systematic literature review of emotional labor research from the hospitality and tourism literature. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 31(7), 2808–2826.

57.

Chen

Lyu

Qiu

(2016). Sexual harassment and proactive customer service performance: The roles of job engagement and sensitivity to interpersonal mistreatment. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 54, 116–126.

58.

Madera

J. M.

(2018). When targets blame their organization for sexual harassment: A multilevel investigation of within-person appraisals. Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, 59(1), 49–60.

59.

Marsh

H. W.

Hocevar

(1988). A new, more powerful approach to multitrait-multimethod analyses: Application of second-order confirmatory factor analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 73(1), 107–117.

60.

Memon

M. A.

Salleh

Baharom

M. N. R.

(2017). The mediating role of work engagement between pay satisfaction and turnover intention. International Journal of Economics, Management & Accounting, 25(1), 43–69.

61.

Mendes

W. B.

(2019). Emotion. In Finkel

E. J.

Baumeister

R. F.

(Eds.), Advanced social psychology: The state of the science (pp. 325–342). Oxford University Press.

62.

Mkono

(2010). Zimbabwean hospitality students’ experiences of sexual harassment in the hotel industry. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 29(4), 729–735.

63.

Mölders

Brosi

Spörrle

Welpe

(2019). The effect of top management trustworthiness on turnover intentions via negative emotions: The moderating role of gender. Journal of Business Ethics, 156, 957–969.

64.

Morgan

Pritchard

(2019). Gender matters in hospitality (invited paper for “luminaries” special issue of International Journal of Hospitality Management). International Journal of Hospitality Management, 76, 38–44.

65.

Mosquera

P. M. R.

Fischer

A. H.

Manstead

A. S. R.

Zaalberg

(2008). Attack, disapproval, or withdrawal? The role of honour in anger and shame responses to being insulted. Cognition & Emotion, 22(8), 1471–1498.

66.

Munson

L. J.

Miner

A. G.

Hulin

(2001). Labeling sexual harassment in the military: An extension and replication. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(2), 293–303.

67.

Murry

W. D.

Sivasubramaniam

Jacques

P. H.

(2001). Supervisory support, social exchange relationships, and sexual harassment consequences: A test of competing models. The Leadership Quarterly, 12(1), 1–29.

68.

Nunnally

(1978). Psychometric theory. McGraw-Hill.

69.

Obada-Obieh

Spagnolo

Beznosov

(2020). Towards understanding privacy and trust in online reporting of sexual assault. Sixteenth Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS), 145–164.

70.

O’Neill

O. A.

Vandenberg

R. J.

DeJoy

D. M.

Wilson

M. G.

(2009). Exploring relationships among anger, perceived organizational support, and workplace outcomes. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 14(3), 318–333.

71.

Peng

A. C.

Schaubroeck

J. M.

Chong

(2018). Discrete emotions linking abusive supervision to employee intention and behavior. Personnel Psychology, 72, 393–419.

72.

Poulston

(2008). Metamorphosis in hospitality: A tradition of sexual harassment. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 27(2), 232–240.

73.

Preacher

K. J.

Hayes

A. F.

(2008). Asymptotic and resampling strategies for assessing and comparing indirect effects in multiple mediator models. Behavior Research Methods, 40(3), 879–891.

74.

Ram

(2018). Hostility or hospitality? A review on violence, bullying and sexual harassment in the tourism and hospitality industry. Current Issues in Tourism, 21(7), 760–774.

75.

Rasoolimanesh

S. M.

Wang

Roldan

J. L.

Kunasekaran

(2021). Are we in right path for mediation analysis? Reviewing the literature and proposing robust guidelines. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, 48, 395–405.

76.

Rindskopf

Rose

(1988). Some theory and applications of confirmatory second-order factor analysis. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 23(1), 51–67.

77.

Schaubroeck

J. M.

Peng

A. C.

Hannah

S. T.

(2016). The role of peer respect in linking abusive supervision to follower outcomes: Dual moderation of group potency. Journal of Applied Psychology, 101, 267–278.

78.

Segars

A. H.

Grover

(1998). Strategic information systems planning success: An investigation of the construct and its measurement. MIS Quarterly, 22, 139–163.

79.

Sherwyn

Kaufman

E. A.

Klausner

A. A.

(2000). Same-sex sexual harassment: How the “equal opportunity harasser” became a legitimate defense. Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly, 41(6), 75–80.

80.

Shi

Gordon

Tang

C.-H.

(2021). Momentary well-being matters: Daily fluctuations in hotel employees’ turnover intention. Tourism Management, 83, 104212.

81.

Sims

C. S.

Drasgow

Fitzgerald

L. F.

(2005). The effects of sexual harassment on turnover in the military: Time-dependent modeling. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90(6), 1141–1152.

82.

Sojo

V. E.

Wood

R. E.

Genat

A. E.

(2016). Harmful workplace experiences and women’s occupational well-being. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 40(1), 10–40.

83.

Spector

P. E.

(2006). Method variance in organizational research: Truth or urban legend? Organizational Research Methods, 9(2), 221–232.

84.

Tabachnick

B. G.

Fidell

L. S.

(2007). Using multivariate statistics (5th ed.). Pearson.

85.

Tangri

S. S.

Burt

M. R.

Johnson

L. B.

(1982). Sexual harassment at work: Three explanatory models. Journal of Social Issues, 38(4), 33–54.

86.

Tepper

(2007). Abusive supervision in work organizations: Review, synthesis, and research agenda. Journal of Management, 33, 261–289.

87.

Tuckey

M. R.

Searle Ben

Boyd

C. M.

Winefield

A. H.

Winefield

H. R.

(2015). Hindrances are not threats: Advancing the multidimensionality of work stress. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 20(2), 131–147.

88.

Tussyadiah

I. P.

Zach

F. J.

Wang

(2020). Do travelers trust intelligent service robots? Annals of Tourism Research, 81, 1–14.

89.

U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. (n.d.). Sexual harassment. https://www.eeoc.gov/sexual-harassment

90.

Waudby

Poulston

(2017). Sexualization and harassment in hospitality workplaces: Who is responsible? International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research, 11(4), 483–499.

91.

Weber

Bradley

G. L.

Sparks

(2017). Stressor effects of negative online reviews on anger and burnout in the restaurant industry. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 29(11), 2847–2866.

92.

Willness

C. R.

Steel

Lee

(2007). A meta-analysis of antecedents and consequences of workplace sexual harassment. Personnel Psychology, 60(1), 127–162.

93.

Winter

Papathanassis

(2020). Sexual harassment during tourism and cruise internships: Exploring situational factors, causes, and their implications. Tourism in Marine Environments, 15(2), 85–94.

94.

Wong

Christmann

Rogerson

Monk

(2020). Reality versus rhetoric: Assessing the efficacy of third-party hate crime reporting centres. International Review of Victimology, 26(1), 79–95.

95.

Lee

Popa

Madera

J. M.

(2021). Should I leave the industry? The role of stress and negative emotions in response to an industry negative work event. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 94, 102843.

96.

Zhao

Lynch

J. G.

Chen

(2010). Reconsidering Baron and Kenny: Myths and truths about mediation analysis. Journal of Consumer Research, 37(2), 197–206.

97.

Zhu

Lyu

(2019). Workplace sexual harassment, workplace deviance, and family undermining. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 31(2), 594–614.